


|nothing quite like this|

by littlekaracan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (Mostly Their Fellow Jedi), Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Child Murder, Gen, Jedi Culture & Tradition, Like that's it, Open Essay To The Galaxy, Order 66 (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pro Jedi, Reflection, Semi-Metafiction, Some Canon Characters Are Mentioned - Freeform, a lot of it, as all hell, canon typical genocide, discussions of Genocide, in a way? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlekaracan/pseuds/littlekaracan
Summary: I look at us both, the Jedi and the clones, and the Galaxy has failed us. And we were not perfect, either of us, but Force... Force! We did not know. We lost by fighting, we lost both on our part and on yours, but what were we supposed to do? Let others die? Our dignity, our unwillingness to draw a lightsaber, our philosophies of justice and peace, even, they can never amount to anything if we aren’t willing to become a sacrifice to stop mindless death.Was the War not mindless death? Mindless suffering? I attended more Jedi funerals in the nine years I spent in the Temple than a Master Jedi who died fifty years ago. I would have attended thousands more, even without the Purge.The War was a hydra.- Unknown Jedi Purge Survivor, circa 6 ABY.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28





	|nothing quite like this|

**Author's Note:**

> oookay here we go! thanks for checking out the fic!
> 
> please heed the warnings. there are a lot of in-depth discussions of o66, specifically a lot of descriptions of the massacre at the jedi temple, *especially* concerning the children, as the 'narrator' themself was a child at the time.

**Good evening,**

I hope you are all having a productive tenday. See attached the reading task below, but remember that **it is not mandatory** due to the contents we previously discussed. Translations and terms that are in non-Basic languages will be provided under the text.

I would also like to remind you that I expect to receive your reflections on the significance of the abandonment of the Burning ceremony following the conclusion of the New Sith Wars by next Primeday at the latest. Stay safe.

\- **Master Purkka**

_Post Scriptum_. There can be absolutely no distribution of this task across the Temple, especially to the younger Padawans. They will read it when they are older, refrain from putting them through the Trial of the Spirit twenty years too early or I will personally pull you over to explain yourselves to Master Skywalker himself by the ear, lek, horn or other applicable bodypart. Thank you.

* * *

_It is the day of the Empire, and it is the day of the death of the Empire, and it was - perhaps twenty years ago or so, now, that it first reared its murderous head. Its regime, short-lived as it might've been, brought a meaning of power to the Galaxy it had never seen before. And so many suffered. So many died. Billions of people, entire planets wiped out. Perhaps Alderaan is the best example. The wound is still fresh, and to the survivors I’d like to say - I understand. Afa’kei’na. Ni suvarii. Je stuka u. 1Mourning has no language and no barrier within. And I understand, and I mourn with you, and I’ll tell you, because the sooner you realize the less broken you will feel - _

_It does not get easier. Not like you think. Perhaps you learn to push it away. But the distance only makes it that - distant. Never easier._

_It’s been twenty years, and still no one I know from Home calls this day the day of the Empire, and we will not call it the day of the Republic, if one forms, either. It has been, it still is and it will always be, to all those who carry the weight on their shoulders, - the day of our Home’s destruction. The day the Jedi Order fell. The day of dread and genocide, and the day when we realized nobody was coming to help us. Nobody ever would have._

_They speak a lot, nowadays, of what was lost. Jedi Generals and Clone Commanders. They do not speak much of us, those who were caught inbetween, never nothing but not yet something, either. They speak of those who shaped history, and they are worthy of speaking about, yes, but they come in single digits. We came in thousands._

_We; Who were we? We were alive, every last one of us, trying to stay courageous and trembling nevertheless when they came for us. I was a child, see, and my friends were children. And let me tell you, there is nothing quite like realizing, huddled underneath your desk and trying in vain to explain to your sobbing sister that if she keeps crying you’ll both die, that there is not a soul coming to help. It’s not something easily spoken about. Hearing footsteps and lightsabers and murder just outside the door and hugging your head and your siblings and praying, screaming into the Force, begging it to let the locks hold, even as you know that locks won't stop anybody. And all the while, all the while it beats like the heart in your chest, like a drum in your head, the voice of a child, and it screams back at you, ‘Nobody is coming. Nobody is coming. You’re all alone and powerless to do anything and there’s nothing to be done, and nobody is coming.’_

_When I escaped the Jedi Temple (it was on Coruscant, it was beautiful, it was supposed to be safe), I left behind the skewered body of my sister who reached up to my waist. I reached up to the chest of a senior Padawan. I was proud of growing taller and taller, and I used to tell that sister of mine that she’d never outgrow me, we weren’t of the same species._

_Force, **Force** , I wish, how I wish she would have gotten the chance to outgrow me._

_I remember climbing into a transport with a couple of other Jedi that managed to escape with me. And even as a child I could tell that there were no still-living threads tying them to the Temple, other than those that were sitting with them. We were cramped in a fighter, I don’t remember the model now, but it’s strange how quickly one forgets about the cold and discomfort when there are so many sources of grief in their head. Six of us, maybe a couple more I didn’t see, a boy named Corr'nuar'oureme - we were briefly in the same lightsaber practice, weeks ago - was piloting, and he was younger than me, that much I can remember. Certainly didn't have a license for it, but he'd learned somewhere anyway. Flew us right out of hell, through blasterfire and smoke and some of it got inside and I could smell the death in the air; one of us died on the transport, a Knight of maybe my current age, and there was a Master who I knew lost a Padawan in the Temple and she covered the body with her cloak, I remember. And I stared at it, for so long, almost like I was expecting it to move. Death isn’t something a child understands, I think. It was not real to me._

_Oh, but I know now, what it was like. We flew to kark-knows-where, I was convinced we were going to crash, at first, but Corr'nuar'oureme was a miracle. I sat on the floor and the ship was shaking, and I was certain the cannons would get us if not an engine fire, but… nothing happened, in the end. Lights were flickering, we were all swaying from side to side, nobody could give reassurances, and I was staring at my shoes. It's strange how I remember this: my shoes were untied. It's a wonder I didn't trip on them. They were untied because I woke in the middle of the night, that cycle. And I stepped out, still in my sleeping clothes, and I thought it was some lightsaber practice at a strange hour until I was presented with an armful of bodies and realized it wasn't one._

_I was pressed between two twins, not even Padawans yet, and I think they were called Purqa and Quito but by the Force do names from those days escape me. But I remember that the air had been so terribly still in that transport. For hours. It had been too long since any of us moved. As soon as we flew out into orbit we just… froze. Corr'nuar'oureme would click something on the control panel occasionally, and another Knight kept lying through his teeth to whatever ship tried to comm us, put on the heaviest Ryl accent and went to town. I still have no idea how he managed it because I could see the tears on his face but he sounded so **jolly** when he spoke - ‘Oh, yes, of course, only travellers, we’re only researchers, going back home to Eswo’Twi’lek, 2oh, would you like to hear about the properties of Togrutan red grasses? Non? What about the Umbaran Vixus leaves - not that either? Well, my good sir, then I do believe we have nothing to talk about, have a wonderful tenday’ \- but that was it. I was frozen, the twins were frozen, the old Master was frozen. The body was… well._

_But one of the twins stood up, after hours and hours and maybe days of travel, and she stepped to dig around in the cargo holds above, and there was food, I remember. Not much. But at least we had water._

_We split the rations, that’s one of my last memories of the Jedi Order as a whole - an act of sharing. I don’t think we ever came together and felt the same as then, it was the last time we all truly were the Order, in a way._

_It was strange. The Knight was muttering lines of the Code in Ryl, the twins ate in turns, one eating, one watching over the other. Corr'nuar'oureme took one bite and turned around in the pilot’s chair, and that was the first and last time I ever saw a Chiss cry. I saw, at some point, that the old Master wasn’t eating at all. She wasn’t really even… there. Looking at us, but her gaze went straight through like we weren't there at all. So I moved to her, and I put this packet of milk on her knee. And I said something like, ‘You should drink this,’ because I didn’t know, back then, how to tell her that she was staring into nothing, and spiraling, and that she was beginning to look like the body of the Knight she’d covered with her cloak._

_And I remember her thanking me, and never touching the milk, and nothing changing at all. She was the oldest of us there, she could feel the Jedi dying all around the Galaxy in the way that only perhaps the Knight could even come close to. I can’t imagine how that must’ve felt; I only sense the bleak emptiness of the Galaxy with so few of us coating it in Light. The Master had lost her child in the Temple, the epitome of safety, a Jedi’s haven, and what was there that any of us could’ve done, could’ve said?_

_There is no word to describe the feeling of losing one’s home. There is no description of the grief, of the horror of uncertainty, of the future that coils around you like a threat instead of a promise. There were no promises we could’ve made, then, not to each other or to ourselves. I had never felt so lost. I had never known, before, that there was nobody who could help me._

_Fighting for survival when everyone in the Galaxy suddenly wants you dead isn’t as adventurous as it sounds. By the end of the tenday it was only me, one of the twins, Corr'nuar'oureme and the Knight left. We couldn’t even take the bodies. We split up, then, and by the Force if I were to tell you all that happened, I would grow old before I could manage to put it all into proper words. There was no courage in my actions, no Jedi innovation or even adherence to the Code. I hid, because we all hid. We stayed silent, because we could not speak without being hunted down. We pressed ourselves to the ground and pushed ourselves into shadows, because taking a stand would have meant certain death for us - and for anyone else the Empire could find and blame. At some point, staying hidden was the only salvation we could hope for. That our bodies would be accounted for by some other dead Twi’lek, by some other dead pair of younglings, by another Chiss - and it is horrible to write things like this, now, but back then it was simple common sense. It was a hope._

_I was quick to find out that the Galaxy had changed overnight, and Force! How could it not have? There had been too many bodies, too much destruction, and of course the Empire would rise from the ashes of forsaken virtues. Worst of all, one of such virtues it employed: loyalty. It was not through honest means, naturally, or even necessarily virtuous. They committed every crime around the black hole within their Army - from blackmail to murder to warmongering - and perhaps the most vile of them all was the mind-control. The way I see it, though, calling it simple control was an understatement. It was a complete brainwashing of a soul, leaving a husk where an individual once was, and the Empire employed this on a scale of millions._

_They say shame is quiet. They say shame is suffocating. They say it diminishes a man, it cuts off his breath and forces him into a blind, deaf corner of his mind. They say it takes away his voice and cuts his tongue in half, strangles him with it. They say that guilt is unbearable and that it crushes one into the ground, makes them fall to their knees and crawl. They say there is nothing to be done about the ceaseless darkness that grips your chest and lurches into your head and keeps you from ever truly living again._

_For a time - I’m embarrassed to reveal how long, really - I wondered how the clones could bear to stand and speak. How they, after killing us, from the toddlers to the old Masters, would serve and fight and kill again like we were nothing to them, like the bearing of our deaths did not weigh on their consciousness, like they were the machines the Jedi had spent so long trying to convince everyone they were the furthest thing from. I remember seeing the bodies of Jedi, but there were clones, too. There were clones, cut down, all the same, both inside and out. And I am ashamed to say it now, yes, but back then, it was all bitter satisfaction. They had turned on us, they had paid the price._

_I know better, now. Oh, Force, Force, they paid the price for sure! They paid the price for evils that were not theirs, for the actions of their bodies they had never wanted. How many of them were going insane under those helmets, losing their minds when faced with what they were being forced to do, slipping further and further with each kill?_

_What could I tell them, were I to see even a single clone again? Ni ceta, ner’vode. **Ni ceta** , jii bal darasuum.3 It was never supposed to end this way, none of it. I am sorry we only got three short years together, it’s a crying kriffing shame, but you were good companions, from what I’ve been told and what I’d experienced in so little time, and you were better friends, and better men and women and otherwise. You were better than what the Galaxy deserved, after all, and far better than what it wanted you to be. That’s why everything hurts so much, vode.4 Nothing burns quite like unfairness. Nothing stings quite like the knowledge of how good we could’ve had it._

_But I want you to know that there is not a single Jedi who, knowing what you’ve been made to do and through what means, would blame you. Even if they’re not strong enough to look at you again - and I understand, I don’t think I am, either - a right Jedi will never blame you, because you have nothing to be blamed for. Your creation was not a fault; and all the crimes against the Galaxy and life itself fall on the Sith’s shoulders, the Empire’s shoulders. You do not deserve the suffering you would inflict upon yourselves._

_We do not, either. And I look at us both, the Jedi and the clones, and the Galaxy has failed us. And we were not perfect, either of us, but Force... Force! We did not know. We did all we could, all we were capable of doing! We abandoned ourselves to bring peace to the Galaxy, oh, we lost by fighting, we lost both on our part and on yours, but what were we supposed to do? Let others die? We abandoned ourselves, I’ll say it again and I’ll know it to be true, but we abandoned one part to keep the other. And our dignity, our unwillingness to draw a lightsaber, our philosophies of justice and peace, even, they can never amount to anything if we aren’t willing to become a sacrifice to stop mindless death. _

_Was the War not mindless death? Mindless suffering? I attended more Jedi funerals in the nine years I spent in the Temple than a Master Jedi who died fifty years ago. I would have attended thousands more, even without the Purge. The War was a hydra, and I dare not imagine the different varieties of destruction that could’ve befallen our Home._

_There was no victory for us. There never would have been a victory for us. There is nothing I regret more than this realization, that history was decided long before any of us ever had the chance to do anything about it._

_The last thing grief can be is quiet. You won’t see quiet on the inside, at least. Grief is explosive and angry and it suffocates as much as shame does, but it’s not the same. Never the same. The impression one might’ve gotten from our silence in the fighter might have said the opposite, but just because we were not speaking did not mean we did not feel. We felt far too much, to the point the violent concoction of it all was pressed into a crushing numbness. I did not feel anything when the old Master was killed, when one of the twins was killed, when the other Knight that was with us was killed. There is a point, certainly, when it all becomes too much, and the Galaxy has done nothing since to move the Jedi away from that edge._

_Years after the Purge, I was Knighted. And to those that aren’t familiar with the process, I’d like you to know that it’s a most beautiful ceremony. A Padawan has to pass trials and then they’re allowed to shed their braid. For a lot of Jedi, it’s the most important experience in their lives, the opportunity for which I thought for sure was taken away from me along with my family. I never stopped wearing the beads on my head, not even long after I had separated with the last Jedi I’d seen. It’s not something you can just drop whenever you want. I suppose it all worked out to my advantage, after all._

_I was captured by the Empire, thrown in a cargo hold with an old Master, and they helped me escape. They were dying already - the Empire had not gotten any kinder to us - and with their final breath, they deemed me worthy of finishing my Padawanship. Oh, how elated I would have been, once. But it only brought me back to that bleak sense of numbness as I rocked the old Master to eternal rest, and I hoped that they would find peace in the Force. Stars above know we all, regardless of what we’ve done in the aftermath, deserve at least a taste of it._

_But a Knight has duties a Padawan does not. How would I complete them without the Order? There was nobody to protect except myself, nobody to be compassionate toward, nobody to care for. Just escaping the genocide did not prevent us from escaping what was done to our culture, to our collective soul. There is nothing in the Galaxy that can heal the wound in the Force that the Purge left; and there will never be anything, until the last person who remembers the stench of death in the air and the scorched flesh and plastoid passes into the Cosmos._

_Living or dead, the Purge decimated the very essence of who we were. The Sith do not limit themselves to physical torture, and we all know that all-too-well, let me tell you so._

_I know Jedi who joined the Rebellion. I know Jedi who became hermits, keeping the ways of the Code and trying not to slip into the Dark themselves. I knew Jedi who… gave up, and faded away._

_I was none of them. I wrote. The archives, I still know nothing about what happened to our archives, but I wasn’t going to let it go. The archives of the Jedi Order, oh, even touching them would’ve been one of the Empire’s most vile crimes, the collective knowledge that the Order had accumulated was greater than that of any safekept library in any system, on any planet. Just standing inside would make you feel more focused, curious, you’d stay and stare in awe of all the wisdom of the Galaxy that had been lovingly brought here throughout centuries and centuries of diligent studies, spanning generations of Masters, Knights and Padawans._

_I was, for a fair bit of time, angry. Enraged. The propaganda machine of the Empire was perfectly wired to make the entire Galaxy forget about us, but we couldn’t let them have it, could we? We were peacekeepers, but we were keepers of history as well. Our history and the history of the Galaxy, and where there are restrictions to the past, there are restrictions to the full picture, to the suffering and mistreatment of those who lost the wars. And I may not have been an archivist, Sith-spit, I had not become a Guardian or a Consular or a Sentinel; I did not know whether I would go to the front lines for as long as the War raged or become a Temple Guard or perhaps turn out to work best as a Shadow. But the Jedi had always been a family closer than blood, and I had known all of them. And I have not let them slip into the unknown. I never would’ve forgiven myself if I had._

_During my years, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I wrote until mountains rose around them, around the people I knew and didn’t know and lost all the same, poems and memoirs and stories and memories, and all of them are true. I need the Galaxy, at least a tiny part of it, to know of us, to know not only of the legends of grandeur that nobody really believes anymore anyway but also of the way we lived; of the way we rose in the morning and fell to rest at night. Some of my datapads are filled with short descriptions of the warm rooms I used to reside in, some of them are simple lists of names with symbols next to them that mean nothing to everyone else but to me and the other Jedi: Dead, missing, surviving. A rebel, a recluse, undercover in the Empire. Saleucami, Tatooine, Florrum. This is the only way, really, to make sure we stay alive in memory, in heart. The ancient rooms with the crystals of the dead are burnt and bombed, flattened to the ground, but we have never been so easily destroyed, and we never will be._

_We were peacekeepers. We never forsook that name. Not for the Republic; not when we fought for them, not when we died for them, not when they killed us for all the good we would have done. We were peacekeepers, that is what we’ve always been. We cannot lose sight of it, even now. Even in this perceived victory._

_A select number of people knew, back then, that I was - still am - a Jedi. And it was no small risk, that knowledge, that secret, blazing like an eternally-lit lightsaber over their heads. To those people, sometimes, I read my writings out loud. I read, and I read, and I read and I didn’t realize that I’d stopped reading long ago, that I had begun talking, and there were tears on my face but my voice could not waver because **remembrance is eternal and forgetting is forsaking,** and I would look up and they would be staring at me like they could not understand. They would look with distant horror in their eyes, and I’d feel more than ever that I knew why I was doing this. Why it had to be done._

_There is creation, to be born of loss. There is remembrance to be born of death, and there is life to be breathed into every corner of a mind that would rather fade away into oblivion. There is no word that can describe true grief, but there are more than enough to describe its causes._

_And I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and even after I join the Force, by its sweet calling or an escaping Inquisitor’s treacherous blade, even after this, I have the hope that my writings will persist. Perhaps someone will read them, one day, and be horrified. They should be, anyhow. There can be descriptions of all events on Holonet, there can be as many as one would like, but, as with seeing forbidden footage, reading through the eyes of someone who was **there** is a different matter altogether. There are things Holonet cannot tell you._

_I want you to know that, to us, the Jedi Order did not fall twenty years ago. To us, it fell yesterday. And ereyesterday. And every single day before that._

_I used to know a Kel Dor, and her name was - and I cannot remember her name, as I cannot remember so many, and it is a terrible thing, forgetting. But what I do remember is the hiss of the mask they ripped off her face. And you might think you know what screaming sounds like. You might know, you might even have heard it from someone who is suffering, from someone who is hurt. But it all changes when it’s someone you know, when it’s someone whose voice was normally so different. And you hear it twist and you hear it crack and it’s nothing and everything, and they’re the same person, it seems, but they are not, not really._

_I think a certain bane of the Jedi is that we do not forget. At least it feels that way to me. I remember it all like I'm still in that fighter, still lulling myself into uneasy slumber between Purqa and Quito. The Kel Dor being killed by the air she could not breathe in was only the beginning; I remember the way Marek’ka shrieked and dropped her lightsaber, falling defenseless to the ground after a Sith cut an arc to the side of her head and her lek dropped to the floor, severed completely. She had the most lovely singing voice; sometimes, in the creche, we'd fall asleep together and she'd be humming lullabies into my tunic. I remember seeing a Knight being gutted with one stab of a lightsaber that went not only through him but through the youngling he was shielding, too. They were Padawans of the same Master, I believe, but I did not know them well - and it pains me all the same._

_I remember running with my sister. By the Force, do I remember the running. Everyone was running, everyone who could not defend themselves. Mostly the children. But we were not as strongly tied to the Force, just yet, and there was no escape from those who were. I remember chancing upon the High Council’s chambers and seeing the unimaginable, and dragging my sister inside anyway because a cold part of me knew the clones would not go into a room where the corpses of children already littered the floor._

_I suppose it was a mercy of the Force that I still know not of how death came to my own Master. I knew when it happened either way, when something in my head snapped and dissolved and I could do nothing but shake and wail._

_Out of respect and admiration to his family’s actions years after this do I not speak the name of the Sith who killed us. The Jedi who sliced off Marek’ka’s lek, who killed the Knight and youngling, who massacred the crechelings whose faces I was too afraid to glance at just in case I recognized them._

_To think so many of us were already forgotten. Because of our nature or the simple fact that we had no living ties to us left. Perhaps I was forgotten too, unwittingly, presumed dead - and for the first few years after the Purge, I think that would’ve been a fair presumption._

_Once, perhaps a decade or more ago, in an incredibly risky ordeal, I met a group of other still-living Jedi. We met, and I believe it’s safe to say, now, on a moon of Ilum. To anybody else, it would’ve been the stupidest idea ever conceived - Ilum, where the mines of the Empire were defiling the caves, the beautiful halls of kyber crystals? Where, if we were discovered, we’d be executed on sight with neither a trial nor mercy? Where the military of the Empire gathered day and night and where the roars of its treacherous machines echoed with not a moment of silence?_

_Yes. Precisely._

_Here’s something one should know: as long as I was a Jedi, I would’ve been executed anywhere I was found. All of us, all the same. I don’t think most realize that most of the Jedi had nothing to lose after the Order fell, and I mean it. **Nothing**. The Order was our Home, our family, and our very essences. The Order was what shaped us, what cared for us, what loved us. It was where we shyly made our first reaches into the Force and where we returned, years later, in full control of it, like it had never been a difficult feat at all._

_I, of course, never got to do that. I was too young. I was a Padawan when the killing started. But there were older Jedi in our bold little meeting, and I could read it out in their eyes. I could feel it in their hearts. All of us grieved different things, and we all understood it._

_Grief had been our way of life for years, until then, and we hardly could’ve kept our tentativeness when it came to seeing our family again for the first time in so long._

_So that’s what we did, with the audacity of children who have not yet learned to fear and the bitterness of old wisemen who have spent decades trying to keep their anger from breaking them. We slipped right into the Empire’s open jaws, and we kicked at its teeth. Why not? What could they do - kill us? What we were doing back then could hardly be called living, anyway._

_I know, in hindsight, why so many Jedi made attempts on Vader’s life, on Sidious’ life, after the Purge, even when they knew they were alone and afraid and damn near kriffing suicidal. Had we not grown up idolizing the idea of laying our lives down for the right cause? When we have nothing but our lives, we make the conclusion that the only way we can serve the Light is by fully offering ourselves to the Force with a final attempt to better the chances of others. We decide that our only worth goes as far as we do; and the farthest we could go, then, was the Death Star, the Sith, the possibility of an agonizing death on the cold floors of the Empire, if only it meant we got a chance to spark even the tiniest ember of Light in a cold and unreceptive Galaxy._

_That is… a nightmare far away, now, some might say. And in some way or to some people, it might be. But there are certain nightmares that will not dissipate for as long as we live._

_I remember meeting those people, all of them so different and pained in incomparable ways, and yet we were all the same. For a moment, I was in the Order again. I was a Knight of the Order, something I thought, once, I’d grow to be for as long as I carried on living. And I was given that, the highest gift, if for a mere blip of time in my life, for a day, a few, a tenday - I held onto it as tight as I could for the duration of our little Gathering, because, really, that’s what it was. Ilum, its moons, that was where our connection to the Force was the strongest. I remember meeting those people, those strangers, and the only thought in my head was ‘family’. We were that, in spite of never even laying eyes on each other before. And yet._

_We exchanged stories, we spoke remembrances, we shared the names of our loved ones, the dead and the living. Some spoke of clones; this was, I might mention, where I found out about what a tragedy had befallen our armies. And I remember standing there, frozen, unable to breathe through the realization that I, too, had stumbled into the pit of the Empire's deception; I had villainized men who had never wanted this fate for the Galaxy, I had tied them to murder and rightless hate that I am most ashamed of, now. And, back then, a Master placed a hand on my shoulder and told me, quietly, that he understood. He hadn’t known for a time, either._

_I began writing down the names of clones, too, when I returned from the moon. I hadn’t been acquainted with many, mostly passers-by, but there were also a few that would visit the creches as naturally as if they’d been Crechemasters. I knew my Master’s Commander; I don’t know what became of him, but it was certainly something worse than what the man deserved. The more well-known ones I remember too, of course, Commander Bacara, Commander Cody, Captain Rex - or perhaps he ended up a Commander as well, it escapes me. I wrote down the names of those the Jedi I had met spoke of, and those whom I heard of, later on. If I were to say complete Remembrances at this point, I would run my throat dry._

_In spite of all this, Ilum had felt like something not only heartbreaking, but vindicating. Liberating, in a way. It had been a long time since I’d watched a lightsaber duel, since I’d taken part in one myself. I was, and still am, sloppy; both in the Force and with a lightsaber. The Empire took my years of learning away from me, and I cannot catch up to what I am supposed to be, but that was far from the worst thing about the Purge. We - the Jedi I met - got to know each other in ways I never would’ve asked for, had I not been afraid this would be my last time seeing another one of my people. We told each other the most carefully guarded things because the shame of every little sliver of darkness we carried being pulled into the light could never compare to the agony of having no one to tell it to. We argued viciously over our different interpretations of the Code and the meanings of our adherence to it, which was about the most Jedi thing we could’ve done. Finally, I remember laughing. I don’t remember what I was laughing about. But I remember laughter, and not only mine._

_Force, it took so many years to rebuild something akin to a self. And, in a way, when we Jedi saw the decimation of the Death Star, when we watched it or heard of it, it was a push in the right direction for those who were not too far gone. Even then, we could not be blamed. I don’t believe many of us sought to see the Empire fall out of a desire for vengeance. But now, I feel like things can finally be **right** again._

_I am delighted to hear of the Jedi Academy. Delighted, with absolute certainty, awaiting the hope of a new Temple. Even if it can never be the same as the spyres rising over Coruscant, it is a new hope, and it will be safe, again, at last. But I am fearful, and I am no longer so caught up in incorrect readings of the Code as to be afraid of my fear when it serves as a warning: we must be cautious. The Galaxy does not love the Jedi. Do not force us to learn the same lesson twice. Let there be no more children who cower underneath upturned desks, let there be no more men who loved us as their friends and siblings cut up in the halls without a chance to explain that their minds were not their own. Let there be no more destruction in the name of salvation that never would’ve been given to us anyway._

_Good luck, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker. Your name brings hope to us all. Your name is a relic, a reflection and, hopefully, a promise, of a better time. I can only pray that such times follow the Empire’s dismantling. And I hope you don’t make the mistakes of the Masters I remember. I hope your Council stands firm in the face of pressure and observant when drowned by deception. Honest in the name of the Code and kind, above all, compassionate, as we all know Jedi can be._

_May the Force be with you, and, seven Sith-spitting hells, may it be with us all. We’re all so kriffing weary, these days. Perhaps this is the Light finally shining through. Perhaps this is the end, and the path to your victory. Remember whence you came from, and decide where you must go. We both know what I’ve kept silent about; and I hope you consider it as well, when you consider yourself. Children are not their parents and Padawans are not their Masters. What is Dark can be made Light again, and all things are of the Force, and to the Force they shall return. There is no stopping this. There is only making peace and keeping it, within yourself and out there in the Galaxy. There is no chaos, after all, not without an end; harmony follows, always._

_I await the good years with equal bouts of caution and eagerness. The Jedi Order has not been lost to the world, and it is the greatest achievement we ever could have mustered up to hand to each other. And so I’d say to every Force-sensitive who has ever felt even a simmer of Light inside them; the Dark does not last. Perhaps the Light will not last either. We must be aware that life comes in grays, not decisive blanks or voids. But the Force is not malevolent, and it is always with you._

_May you never lose sight of who you are. Whoever you are. Carve yourself the right path. And breathe. There is nothing you can lose that you will not be able to remember, eventually; and remembering is eternal._

_Ni su'cuyi. An darasuum._ 5

* * *

**Translations below.**

1\. Variations of "I understand":  
"I care." - Ryl.  
"I undestand." - Mando'a.  
"I see you." - Huttese. Back to text

2\. "Beloved Ryloth" - Ryl. Back to text

3\. "Forgive me, my brothers. Forgive me, now and forever." - Mando'a. Back to text

4\. "Brothers" - Mando'a. Back to text

5\. "I remember, therefore all is eternal." - Mando'a. Back to text

**Note:** The reason behind the frequent usage of Mando'a in the letter might be the equally widespread knowledge of the language that was commonly spoken in the Grand Army of the Republic dating pre-19 BBY. In spite of their claim to not have known many of the clone troopers that served the Republic at the time (v.s.), the writer appears to be competent in speech and writing of it for an undisclosed reason.

**Author's Note:**

> phew alright! this was so far removed from anything i've ever written before,,, you know what they say, experimental fiction comes for us all! or at least it should. i got exodus literature brainrot and wrote this in one day. drew something for it on tumblr (@cillyscribbles) too, on the off chance yall would like to see it haha. cheers!
> 
> leave a comment if you'd like? i'd love to know your thoughts, but thank u so much for reading regardless!! <3


End file.
